2016: This World We Live In

That’s almost like asking why we don’t live in a world that’s black and white. Well if you need the answer to that, it’s because you and I don’t want to live in a bland, boring and dull world.

A fellow journalism friend once asked me how I would define culture. My reply was:

“Culture is something to be shared and for others to be immersed in, it’s what we do when we travel. We go to explore different cultures and places, to learn about them and they can be life-changing experiences, providing new insight. Why paint a blank canvas with just one color when you can paint and diffuse it with all these different ones and fuse them together to create something lively?”

Different languages, customs, food – culture is an important factor to our lives. It gives us opportunities to keep discovering new things, to be open-minded and find understanding.

We’re about to enter 2017 and our world still faces numerous issues; we’re also living in a digital age.

Source: I get you, forget about keeping up with social media and all this new technology, I’m having trouble keeping up with the Kardashians.

YouTube is one of the biggest entertainment platforms. Without it, we couldn’t binge watch videos, surfing around till we realise it’s 3AM. But what it has enabled is for us to see and hear things from someone else’s perspective. If an event happens on the other side of the world, we can easily find a first-hand witness account and it’ll be authentic.

If you know me, then you’ll know that I binge watch Vloggers and YouTubers. My favorites are the pranks. You’ve got your classics, but when you’re competing for views, you want something new or innovated, not to mention genuine. It’s not unknown for some to publish content that’s set up or that involve employed actors.

Recently #boycottdelta was trending worldwide on Twitter. If you haven’t heard about the story here’s the basis of it: YouTube star Adam Saleh was kicked off a Delta airline flight after defending his friend and fellow YouTuber Slim Albaher, after being told by a passenger to speak English because she felt uncomfortable that they were speaking Arabic.

Watch the videos below to see both their accounts:

As the hashtag trended and the videos racked up views, many articles were written, painting the star as a victim or accusing him of setting the incident up because he is a known prankster. Furthermore, in an occurrence like this, it centres around the issue of racism.

Controversy will remain over this. Now, it’s been alleged that the YouTubers have been forced to say they faked the incident, while others are skeptical